Traffic accidents in Abu Dhabi decreased by 40 percent last week, and a 20 percent drop occurred in Dubai

Millions of BlackBerry users around the world experienced an outage last week that lasted for as long as four days. While such an event was frustrating for most who use Research In Motion's (RIMs) BlackBerry devices for work, police officers say the lack of mobile use was a good thing for roadways.

According to police in the United Arab Emirates, the inability to text or read emails during the BlackBerry outage last week led to less traffic accidents in the area.

Traffic accidents in Abu Dhabi decreased by 40 percent last week, and a 20 percent drop occurred in Dubai. Lt Gen Khalfan Tamiim, the chief of Dubai Police, and Brig Gen Hussein Al Harethi, director of the Abu Dhabi Police traffic department, said that the decrease in traffic accidents is attributed to the BlackBerry outage that began Monday, October 10.

"Absolutely nothing has happened in the past week in terms of killings on the road and we're really glad about that," said Harethi. "People are slowly starting to realize the dangers of using their phone while driving. The roads became much safer when BlackBerry stopped working."

According to RIM, there are 70 million BlackBerry users around the globe. The outage began in Europe, the Middle East and Africa on Monday, October 10, then spread to South America and Asia on Tuesday, and the United States and Canada on Wednesday. RIM apologized and offered free premium apps to compensate for the disruption.